Learning from China’s Industrial Strategy

While the world watches anxiously for signs of US President Donald Trump’s next move vis-à-vis China, Chinese leaders remain focused on the next stage of their country's ongoing economic transformation. What they do should interest everyone – especially US policymakers.

GENEVA – While the world watches anxiously for signs of US President Donald Trump’s next move vis-à-vis China, Chinese leaders remain focused on the next stage of their country’s ongoing economic transformation. What they do should interest everyone – especially US policymakers.

China’s industrialization process, like that of other successful East Asian economies, has combined profit-led investment, active industrial policy, and export discipline. But that approach has its limits, exemplified in the numerous developing countries that have attempted to climb the same development ladder, only to become stuck on the middle rungs or even to fall back, owing to what Harvard University economist Dani Rodrik has called “premature deindustrialization.”

China hopes to avoid this fate, with the help of “China Manufacturing 2025” (CM2025), a roadmap released by Premier Li Keqiang in 2015 to guide the country’s industrial modernization. The strategy focuses on developing advanced manufacturing sectors, but also considers how producer services, services-oriented manufacturing, and green technologies can complement that process.

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I contend the Chinese economy is being propped up by a stack of newly printed money. It must be noted that in a world where money flows across borders at the press of a button, it doesn't matter which major central bank is adding money to the system the effect is the same. Today money printed and injected into the economy of any country drives markets higher across the world by distorting demand and prices.

Those who doubt the power of cross-border money flows need only look to Vancouver Canada which has been forced to implement a foreign buyer tax in an effort to halt the rise in housing prices inflated by "hot money" from China. Toronto's housing market has also gone crazy with prices soaring 33% from the prior year. For more on just how much China is expanding its money supply see the article below.

Two interesting ideas: special purpose government investment funds and efficiency standards for industries beyond energy. The special purpose investment funds could be funded with sales of bonds from FED's massive holdings. There is also a crying need for efficiency standards in medical services, education and housing.

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Mass protests over racial injustice, the COVID-19 pandemic, and a sharp economic downturn have plunged the United States into its deepest crisis in decades. Will the public embrace radical, systemic reforms, or will the specter of civil disorder provoke a conservative backlash?

For democratic countries like the United States, the COVID-19 crisis has opened up four possible political and socioeconomic trajectories. But only one path forward leads to a destination that most people would want to reach.

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